The Starling Roadmap

It’s hard to believe, but at this date one year ago, not a single line of code had been written for Starling. It did not even have a name yet - it was just an idea, featuring lots of question marks and some wishful thinking.

And look where we are now! An impressive number of Starling-powered games has already been released, both on the web and on mobile devices, and the massive forum activity is telling me that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s your support, your honest feedback, and most of all: your hard work that has brought Starling this far! The best proof: the following demo reel, showing some of the greatest games that have been created with Starling already. Isn’t that amazing?

At the same time, we are improving Starling every day, because we want it to be the best Stage3D framework available. Actually, that’s not quite right: we want Starling to be the best cross platform 2D framework out there, period.

Roadmap

We’re perfectly aware that we’ve still got a long way to go to make this ambitious plan become reality. But I’m sure we are on track! Here are some of the things that are currently on our schedule:

Performance. Starling 1.1 offers great performance already, but we’ve still got a few aces up our sleeves. Starling will become less CPU-intensive and will reduce the strain on the Garbage Collector. (Try out the latest development version and you’ll get the idea!)

Enhanced Events. An overhauled event system that is both faster and easier to use. (Already available in the development version, as well!)

Masking. One of the most-often requested features in the forum, this will probably be part of the next major release.

Filters. This will allow you to attach custom fragment shaders to display objects, allowing effects similar to the “Bitmap Filters” of classic Flash.

Tilemaps. Since tiles are used so regularly in games, tilemaps should be supported out of the box.

More. There are other things that will be added along the way, like 3D effects, supporting the right and middle mouse buttons, pixel-perfect hit tests, an enhanced animation system, etc.

However, to know that we set the right course, we need your help! Please send us honest feedback, not only about your priorities in this list, but also about what you think of the current Starling version. Are there areas which are causing you trouble? Things you can’t stand and want to see changed? Must-have features that are not on the list above?

I’m looking forward to your comments, down below or in the forum.

P.S.

As a side-note, there’s an interesting new article in the wiki that shows you all you need to know to optimize the performance of your games. Be sure to check it out!